Daniela Rivera is a Chilean visual artist making work that attempts to understand the object quality of images. Her paintings are usually site specific and react to the spaces of exhibition. By recreating utilitarian uses of painting, which alter representational and perceptual planes, Rivera makes the painting perform as the space and ask the body to assume the role of the figure of the painting. The artist is interested in working at the intersection of disciplines and opposing schools of thought while her work tangos with the process of baroque painting techniques and the presentational strategies and formal undertones of minimalist art and some of the conceptual elements of Arte Povera, a fundamental contradiction but a world of possibilities for staging.

WORKING BACKGROUND

Several years ago, my art practice and work shifted from direct representations of the human body to constructions of spaces which the viewer’s body inhabits. This shift was an attempt to establish a closer relationship with the viewers of my work and allow them to physically experience a sense of agency and responsibility when coming in contact with the work.

Landscape as an object and an embodiment of narratives and history grew as a subject matter of research. On the one hand, the notion of landscape is an extension of the staging strategy that I work with. On the other hand, the traces of human labor that amount to the transformation of the land offer the possibility of bringing into the work cultural, political and social responsibilities more directly.

The idea of a landscape as the backdrop for the erection of culture and the development of national identities is of particular interest to me. It is more interesting when the landscape is the product of certain industries and migratory actions that are responsible for producing the economy, culture and social dynamics of a particular place. The landscape and its scarring become a living document of lives, labor, culture and societal need.

In pursuit of my interest in cultural migration, effects of immigration, and ideas of cultural digestion, I focused my observations on the notion of landscape as a possible surrogate for the materialization of transcultural occurrences. These moments can be located in the transformation of environments due to industry, or simple migration or introduction of alien species in particular areas. I believe that a closer observation of these particular elements or their lack, can open paths into the exploration of immigration from a closer and more personal perspective rather than the more macro political, economic and social modes of analysis we usually encounter.

As an immigrant, myself, I experience constant loss. This iterative experience of loss is unutterable, and due to its active irresolution, it generates paralysis and resistance. This ambiguous loss, though relentlessly experienced, is practically invisible and hardly accounted for, in different studies or reflections about immigration. Political and economic commentaries and research expose, through eloquent explanations, the reasons for migratory movements – the gains for the migrant, the loss for the local economies, the development of new industries, and of course, the social alterations and cultural transformations experienced by particular communities. Many of these texts, documentaries, studies and news broadcasts give little or no description of the pervasiveness of the loss of the recognizable and familiar, as well as the invisibility of home. This ambiguous and continuous sense of loss suffered by the immigrant is frequently overlooked and certainly ill examined.

Exhaustion is a usual feeling, even after sixteen years of residency in the United States. Every morning when I wake up and look through the window the sight appears completely unfamiliar. We don’t look for beauty, but for comfort in what is known. The loss of recognition is the loss of stability. Exhaustion is also a product of constant alertness. There are no moments of obliviousness in unfamiliar grounds, and this unfamiliarity is one that tends to reproduce itself and resists domination. The possibility of mechanized and unconscious travel, or the prospect of inhabiting an invisible “landscape” is impossible.